My first drone. The TinyHawk Freestyle

I know I’ve been recommending starting with a 5” in my other blog entries, but I actually had a 2.5” as my first drone. The Emax Tinyhwak Freestyle.

Why did I choose this one? First I knew very little about drones, and I went for price and looks to be completely honest. I wanted to have something that wouldn’t break the bank, allow me to test this new world, and I didn’t need to buy batteries, chargers, etc.

You see, one of the cool things about the small drones from Emax, like the Tinyhawk II Indoor, and the Tinyhawk II freestyle is that they come with batteries and a USB charger in the box (plus some extra props). This makes things a bit easier for beginners, you basically need the control and the goggles, and you are ready to go and have some fun.

Without knowing it, I chose an excellent freestyle drone. This little devil can do as much as many 5”, it flies wonderfully, it’s quiet, and light so when crashing it doesn’t hurt as much.

 But I didn’t have enough patience to spend the right amount of time in the simulator, and tried to go out and fly the Tinyhawk just after a couple of days in Velocidrone.

What do you think happened? Well, I crashed the drone into my neighbours apple tree just trying to hover it.

I went back to the simulator but just for a few days. Then I tried again and again in “real life”.

I can tell you this, the Tinyhawk is resistant. I crashed it like one million times. In fact, I remember talking to my friends saying how difficult it was to land. I think I couldn’t land the drone the first thousand times I went out with it, and in the end it happened what you will expect, something went loose, and here comes the part that is difficult with such a tiny drone, repair it.

One cable from a motor broke. And the camera connector broke, like in the cooper, not the cable, the actual pad (Yes, I crashed quite hard)…

With my little drone soldering and fixing experience I tried to fix it, and I kind of got it to fly again, with some video issues, which allowed me to keep flying again for a bit until I bought my second drone.

Many moons of this happening, I changed the main board of the Tinyhawk to the TinyHawk II board, which has a much better VTX (up to 200 mwatt), and I it’s my favourite 2.5”, specially cool to bring out during BBQs and show your friends what your life is about these days.

I think I will still keep my recommendation of starting with a 5” like the Cidora if you are at least 60% sure you like this hobby. If you are still testing the water, and are price conscious, a better solution could be to get the Tinyhawk and a radiomaster TX16S paired with your preferred goggles, and you will have enough to go flying in no time, without having to spend more on batteries, charger, and others.

Until the next one!